Bouncers have long been known to check whether a person trying to enter a bar is of age in wide variety of ways. There's the "What's your address" question, the "How tall are you?" check -- along with asking girls to remove heels for accuracy purposes-- and the perhaps now dated, "What's your sign?" test.
But BBC's Newsbeat is reporting that some bouncers are now asking prospective bar goers to log in to Facebook at the door for proof of their age.
"I kind of just logged onto it [Facebook] and showed him the screen and then he didn't question it any further," said Charlotte Neal, 20, who told BBC Newsbeat that at first, she thought nothing of it.
"Then I thought, 'Hang on, is this really how you're supposed to check how old I am?' But I was out and I wanted to get in the club so I just agreed," Neal told BBC Newsbeat.
A representative of the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch told the news outlet that the practice was a clear violation of people's right to privacy.
Nevertheless, some bouncers defended the move.
"Why is it so wrong for people to have to prove the ID is actually them? If you're not doing anything wrong you shouldn't have a problem," a doorman from Worthing told the BBC.
But the folks over at Above the Law have already come up with several reasons why this trend won't -- and shouldn't -- last, not the least of which being that the method is pretty easy for underage people to get around.
"You could hide your phone and say you didn’t bring it," Christopher Danzig wrote on Above the Law. "Perhaps more unsettling, though, is the unavoidably arbitrary enforcement of such a policy. If a bouncer sees an ID he doesn’t believe is real, could he refuse to admit a person into the bar because he or she doesn’t have a smartphone...or simply refuses to allow the bouncer to take the phone? Plus, ethically dubious doormen could use this as an excuse to instantly Facebook-stalk girls they think are cute."
In recent years, advances in technology have made it so fake IDs are increasingly difficult to detect. They don't just look exactly like real ones, or have good holograms these days, some actually pass scanner tests, according to ABC News.
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The Huffington Post | By Katherine Bindley Posted: 05/04/2012 1:30 pm Updated: 05/04/2012 1:30 pm